Category: media art

I’m very pleased to announce that lap-steel guitar maestro Mike Cooper will be performing at Southern Cross University in Lismore on March 30th. Mike’s performance will be preceded by renowned artist and live drawing performer Kellie O’Dempsey.

Mike’s performance will be accompanied by live visuals by SCU media artist Associate Professor Grayson Cooke, and Kellie’s performance will be accompanied by live electronic sound by SCU music lecturer Dr Matt Hill.

This FREE performance will take place at 8pm on March 30th in the Whitebrook Theatre on SCU’s Lismore campus.

Mike and Kellie will also give a masterclass and research symposium the next day, Friday March 31st, at 10am in Studio One29 on the SCU Lismore Campus. Both events are free and open to the public.

About the Performers

Photo: Greg Weight

Mike Cooper plays lap steel guitar and sings, he is an improviser and composer, song-maker, a visual and installation artist; film and video maker and radio arts producer. For the past 50 years he has been an international artistic explorer constantly pushing the boundaries of improvisation and performance. Initially a folk-blues guitarist he is as responsible as anyone else — and more so than many — for ushering in the acoustic blues boom in the U.K. in the mid ’60s. He ranges freely through free improvisation, his own idiosyncratic original songs, electro-acoustic music, exotica, traditional country blues, folk, pop songs, and ‘sonic gestural’ playing utilising open tunings, extended guitar techniques and electronics.

Photo: Kellie O’Dempsey

Kellie O’Dempsey: Focusing on live art and performance drawing, Kellie O’Dempsey develops inclusive, site-specific installations and performances. Hybrid in form, works can incorporate projection, video, collage, architectural space, gestural line, performance and digital drawing; her interdisciplinary approach experiential and emergent. Creating in both solo and in collaborative formats with sound artists and contemporary dance practitioners, this diverse practice investigates notions of transformation through improvisation and happenstance. O’Dempsey’s public and private production enables an inclusive form of cultural interaction via performance and play. The performance drawing works invite the audience to engage directly with the visceral process of making. Kellie’s performances include; Art after Dark, Pier2/3 18th Biennale of Sydney, MONA FOMA, Hobart, and The Firehouse, New York, White Night Melbourne Group shows include: 2014: Is this Art?- dLux Arterial Gallery, Sydney/ A general map of caves, Hawkesbury Regional Gallery NSW/ Finalist, Sunshine Coast Art Prize 2013: Drawn to experience, POP Gallery Queensland College of the Arts. Kellie is currently completing a Doctorate in Visual Arts at Queensland College of Art in Brisbane.

We have released a small preview of some of the documentary work coming out of the UNSETTLED project. This clip features images from interviews conducted with residents of the town of Beltana, a “ghost town” in the FLinders Ranges region of South Australia. In these interviews, residents are discussing the experience of living in the town, and reflecting on historical images of Beltana from the State Library of South Australia.

For the past 18 months, I’ve been working with Dea Morgain on a project in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. The Flinders is an incredible area – on the edge of the outback, surrounded by saltbush and salt-lakes, the Ranges are these massive crusts that rise out of the plains. The Flinders are areas of immense importance to the Indigenous people of that area, the Adnyamathanha people, and they were also the site of very intense colonial usage in the 19th century.

Given the region is filled with ghost towns and the crumbling remains of 19th century buildings, our project takes the figure of colonial ruin as a way in to re-assessing the stories we as Australians tell ourselves about our colonial past. We’re partnering with the State Library of South Australia and the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association, and plan to exhibit the project at the State Library in Adelaide in 2017.

We have been offered MATCH funding from the Australian Cultural Fund, who will match whatever we raise from a crowdfunding campaign up to $10,000 – providing we hit the target…! So – view the video above and CLICK HERE for the campaign website.

The Imagine Science Film Festival is coming up in October in New York, and my “Deforest” work has been accepted for screening. The theme for the festival this year is “air”, highly relevant for a work focusing on the complex issue of deforestation, which is one of the major contributors to anthropogenic climate change.

VERY happy to announce the release of a music video I have created for Jazz singer Leigh Carriage. Leigh is a colleague of mine at Southern Cross University where she lectures in music and voice – when I first heard her track “Breaking Point” at a gig in Byron Bay a couple of years ago, I immediately started seeing images to go with the track. And once I started working with time-lapse more, I knew I’d found a way to bring this to life. And so! This video has been shot in the area where I live, the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. It was shot on a Canon 550D with a Syrp Genie motion-control rig. Hope you enjoy.

I’m very excited to announce that the single-channel version of the “after | image” project has just won an award at the 2014 Videoformes digital arts festival in Clermont-Ferrand, France. Videoformes is a really exciting international forum for digital arts, and includes screenings of experimental digital media as well as exhibitions and electronic performances. The festival includes a number of awards, and this year, “after | image” was awarded the Prix Université Blaise Pascal des étudiants. Nice one! Merci beaucoup a tout les etudiants, et le festival aussi!